Life Through The Viewfinder Of A Camera Named John

Sometimes I feel unappreciated, sometimes I think I try too hard for no reason, sometimes I feel alone, sometimes I fear of the future. But when I see you I realize every time, that I am appreciated, that it’s all worth it, that Im never alone, and that the future will be great. I think too much when Im not sleeping, but I have been having trouble sleeping these past few days. 12 more sleepless nights till I realize once again. Miss you _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.

So I am officially back at school starting a new term. Not a lot has been going on lately especially over winter break, just a lot of hanging out with friends and social events. Most of my classes this term still aren’t going to help me much, since I still havnt switched out of the applied visual arts major. But I am planning on going and talking to the advisor soon (maybe today) to get everything straightened up. There is one class that I am actually really excited for though. That class is Advanced Digital Photography. I am super excited for this class because we will be learning a lot about lighting this term, the specific thing that I am really interested in is studio lighting. I have always wanted to learn about this but it is something that is really hard to learn on my own because I do not have access to such expensive equiptment and lighting setups. I will try to post some of the photos that I take for the class here on tumblr.

I recently created another flickr account under my gmail because I dont really use yahoo for email as much, and so I might end up ditching the older account. My goal for this new one is to have more professional looking work up sort of like a little portfolio. There is not much on there right now but the link to my account is JohnZhangPhotography if you would like to check it out or maybe even follow. 

Also I have been shooting and editing few simple dance videos for my friend Alvin. This was a good chance for me to practice using color correction and syncing up music. Here are the links to the most recent ones, it’s not on my youtube but feel free to check them out and leave him some good comments. (Oh click on the videos to watch in HD on youtube!) XD

It had been a hectic term at OSU taking only 11 credits. I found myself lost not knowing what to do when I had found out that I did not make it into the Graphic Design program, it seemed as if a dream that I had held so close to me faded into thin air. The teachers of the program had told me that they didn’t have time discussing future options with me this term and that I would need to wait until next term started to contact them, so I felt like there was no more options for me. Upon thinking over what had happened. With support from my awesome girlfriend, and parents, I had finally decided that I shouldn’t let this be something that will stop me from achieving a great future. I plan on switching majors, to either New Media Communications, or back into Computer Science. I had given up Graphic Design as a major, but I will not give up on Graphic Design all together! I believe that this is a chance for me to explore a different type of artistic medium, or even a different field of study. This is a big turning point in my life.

In apology: I had been pretty down lately, so I didn’t have a chance to update my tumblr. But now that Winter Break is here, I am back to share all the events in my life. Here are a few photos that I have taken recently. 

These photos were taken at the Red Dress Fashion Show held in the MU Ballroom at Oregon State University. This event was in support of World AIDS Day, in a effort to raise awareness, and introduce ways of preventing the spread of AIDS. More photos from this event on my Flickr account (just click an image to be directed to it).

Here are some photos from my first few football games. This was a very fun, and new experience for me taking sports photography from the seats. Hopefully one day I can get out onto the sidelines to snap better pictures. I learned a lot experimenting and playing around with settings durring these games. And I will definitely be going to more games in the future to bring you more photos! As usual more from this set in my Flickr account.

Anyways thanks for reading, I recently got a new lens (24-70 f2.8 L) so expect more images to be coming to my Flickr account. And I will definitely be having more time on my hands over Winter Break so expect more Tumblr posts as well! I hope everyone is enjoying their break as much as I am!

I havent had much to update recently, so I thought that Id just update with something fun from my personal life. A few days ago, Michelle and I decided to go check out a store called Ceramic Cafe. We noticed it as we passed it on the way to Big Al’s Bowling for our friend Christine’s birthday party.  

This place was just the right environment for painting. They had plenty of ceramic statues for you to chose and paint ranging from cups to plates to small statues of animals. They also supplied you with all of the colors that you could possibly need to create whatever you wanted! The music there was super relaxing as well!

You start by picking out what you would like to paint, and they have the prices next to each item. After paying you are supplied by all the paint you need to use for free so that was pretty nice! Michelle picked the pig thats pictured right, and I chose the fat frog on the left. (they were about 15 bucks each)

This is how they turned out after they were painted, I had trouble getting rid of the white areas so Michelle had to “help” me finish mine heh. It takes a lot of layering to make the paint thick enough to look dark. But after your done painting them you hand them to the cashier so that they can take them back to get them “baked” and glazed. This process takes a few days so they give you a receipt paper for when you come back to pick it up. So today I went back to pick them up and here are the results. (I thought they turned out pretty neat :D)

All and all this was a very fun experience, and I think that we will be heading back there again someday to make some matching mugs or something like that. So yeah Ceramic Cafe is definatly a fun place to go with someone you love when you are bored, its a great way to spend some quality time together and be creative :D! 

OH and they have really cool paintings on their bathroom walls haha. Check it out!

Anyways heres the website if yall want to go and check it out!

Ceramic Cafe’s Website

If you guys do go it would be cool to see pictures of what you guys created as well! 

Recently I have been constantly running out of motivation to pick up my camera and create art, so I decided to visit our local GoodWill to see if they have anything interesting that I could pick up for cheap to photograph. That was when I stumbled upon these 2 lens extender things, one was a wide angle and one was a zoom extender. I looked at them and although these would have been awesome if the threads had fit my 50mm lens I took them home to play around with them. The front element seems to be a little bit smaller than the thread of my 50mm, so I decided to flip them and attach them backwards onto my camera. They seemed to have opposite effects when attached that way. 

The wide angle extender would have a zooming affect and the zoom extender seemed to have a wide angle effect. However the wide angle extender had a cool blurring to it, almost like a tilt-shift lens. The center of the lens was in focus where the sides would begin to fade. I thought this was pretty cool so I put some black electrical tape around the end creating a tighter fit onto the front of my lens. 

Next I took my zoom extender and stuck it inside a pvc fisheye lens that I had created a while back using a pvc stopper, a pvc tube thing and a 180degree peephole. I found the recipe while searching off of youtube. By adding the zoom extender I am able to have a closer zoom into the peephole instead of having to zoom in with the lens itself. This enables me to attach this “fisheye” onto my 50mm fixed focal length lens. 

I had a lot of fun shooting with these attachments for a good hour. But than I realized that with these cheep pieces of glass attached not only did I begin to get lens flare, but the quality of my images had gone down a LOT! So I dont think I will be using any of the two attachments anymore but they were fun while they lasted. Here are a few samples of pictures that I took with them. 

(shot with the zoom extender attached backwards)

(shot with my homemade fisheye lens)

A while back my friend Alvin and I decided to create a dance video since summer was going to be long, and we had plenty of time on our hands. It was a good opportunity for him to get some high quality footage, and for me to experiment with recording/editing footage from my DSLR. Alvin was kind of impatient at first about this and really wanted a finished result fast (haha), so we decided to try and whip one out quickly in one day. So we shot everything that night to a freestyle of Drake - Find Your Love. He wanted some night shots with city lights in the background and so we decided to shoot at the Streets Of Tanasbourne. But we ended up shooting most of our takes on the top level of the parking structure at that Buffalo Wild Wings. The lighting was perfect. I was pretty busy after that day so it took me a long time to finish editing everything and to upload it, but atlast it is done!

Although this took a while to finish this is merely a sample of more videos to come as I continue to develop my skills in videography, and as Alvin develops new choreographies. Hopefully our projects will become bigger and better as time progresses. Oh and pictures from World Of Dance coming soon :)!
Oh and here are some shots that I took from the video shoot.

Recently I have been really unmotivated to do all the things that I used to love, like photography and breakdancing. So yesterday I decided to change it up a little and finally clean my room. 

Now that I got that done I felt a lot more refreshed and my life is now back on track. I am heading out to the World Of Dance in Seattle with some friends on Saturday, so I decided that I gotta get back into dancing, and photography because I plan on doing a little bit of both at the event. So I have been  trying to use my camera more by taking some pictures around the house and uploading a few onto my flickr account. 

And than I plan on getting back into breaking as well starting with seshing with my friend Kunga today at 10 am! Time to break off that rust!